Early One Morning

... long before the sun was rising,

 I went outside and watched the light develop in the sky.  It was lovely sitting there quietly just doing nothing but watching as the colours changed.

When it was a little lighter I peeked over the fence and, observing the neighbours' tidy garden,

The neighbours' back garden

and, comparing it with my own more interesting, but decidedly more messy version,

an interesting mess.

... I decided to use the quiet early morning hours to have a bit of a tidy-up.  I began with one of my favourite parts of the garden, the giant bamboo thicket:

As you can see a huge amount of leafy matter had accumulated over the years behind the stems.  I grabbed, pulled and tugged and raked.  I dragged out dead canes, and had a great old clean-out.

At one point a shaft of sunlight through a newly created gap revealed the sun had risen.

And down the bank the golden light bathed the wilderness and the water.

Unfortunately, shortly after this while singing the song below (but not as well), a piece of bamboo flicked up and caught the side of my eyeball and I spent the rest of the day bathing it and trying to avoid having to go to the doctor*.

The moral of the story is, of course, take care when gardening, especially around bamboo, and concentrate on the task in hand, rather than singing at the same time.



* It's all better now.

Dark and Light.

I am working in watercolours at the moment.  I have a friend who works in oils.
We were having a conversation the other evening and it was clear we were seeing things quite differently.
This was why.
When painting in oils, one usually applies the darks first, and then moves into increasingly lighter colours.  Dark to light.



However when painting with watercolours, the shapes are begun with pale washes.  The darks are applied progressively afterwards.  Light to dark.

Unwrapping a Surprise

Last night the two young people and I were party to a dissection at the Town Hall.

Franz Joseph Haydn wrote the 'Surprise' symphony (Symphony No.94) and for a delightful hour last night at the Town Hall in Auckland, it was taken apart and its bits analysed.
It was great fun listening to conductor Graeme Abbott discuss the background to this work, and share his infectious enthusiasm for the characteristics and some of the details of the music, movement by movement.  We learnt that the first movement begins with a dialogue between three wind instruments and the strings, that the surprise loud chord in the familiar second movement is a joke because afterwards the orchestra just carry on playing as if nothing happened.  (Haydn apparently remarked 'that will wake the ladies up!'  Apparently, much like his work, he was bouncy and jolly, and loved practical jokes, and above all, originality.)

A member of the audience was invited to dance a minuet with the conductor to demonstrate the usual speed, and to show how very funny it was that Haydn had asked for the third 'minuet' movement to be played allegro molto - sped up so much it would have been absolutely impossible to dance to (unless you were perhaps doing Maria and Baron Von Trapp's dance the Lendl to it - which is what it ends up sounding like).  Haydn started what was to become very trendy; the incorporating of peasant country dance rhythms into music.

This was one of the works of this incredibly prolific*, popular and ground-breaking composer who was not only Mozart's good friend but also Beethoven's tutor.

In a nice touch, the sub-group of 41 Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra members that performed extracts and finally played the whole symphony for us last night, numbered almost exactly the same number of 40 members of the London orchestra that first performed it for the first time 222 years ago, with Haydn at the piano.

Here's the second movement.  I'll be surprised if you don't smile at the surprise, even if you've heard it before.




*Haydn wrote 108 symphonies, not counting anything else.  108!

It's not raining in my heart...

...but it is raining from Wellington to Tonga at the moment!

It's probably just a coincidence that the colour of the rain on the satellite map is almost the same colour as the wisteria on our verandah.

Lots of painting done.  Lots to show-and-tell.  See you tomorrow.

Bloggus Interruptus

Hi all.

I'm taking a break from blogging for an indefinite period.  

Nothing's amiss, in fact things are finer than usual.  I just have a lot of painting to do for my exhibition and am also working on getting my art website* looking good and up-to-date.  

PS. Please feel free to email (addy is in my profile) because I'd hate to miss out on important news!

* When it's presentable I'll post its address here.

Not yet ready to my satisfaction, but I'm blogging again...

It's Graduation Time!

My daughter graduated two weeks ago.  She can now write 'B.Tour' (Bachelor of Tourism) after her name.  I'm so proud of her.  It was a three-year full-time degree.

Being Happy 3: Feed the Eels

Click and drag - call them to you, move them around.  Fun!

http://js1k.com/2013-spring/demo/1479

Brought to you this Saturday courtesy of 'How to be Happy' by Jay from the Depp Effect.

Thank you for the link to the experimental game site, Flatattack.